In the easy
way in which Italian papers contain items about philosophers, Pier Luigi
Fornari has a little article in the Avvenire
of Sunday, 26 July 2015 entitled “Edith Stein and the Truth about Husserl.” In
contrast to what some say, it would appear that Husserl died a peaceful and
edifying death.

It is a providential ‘lapsus’ on the part of Maurizio Ferraris that
helps us discover the profound spiritual exchange between Edith Stein and her
master Edmund Husserl. In his essay, “Ontologia ansiosa,” Ferraris tells us
about the last dramatic days of Jacques Derrida, and in this context he
mentions a letter of Husserl to Stein.

In point of fact, we are dealing not with a letter of Husserl to Stein,
but with a conversation between the founder of phenomenology and Sr Adelgundis
Jaegerschmid who was assisting him during the last years of his life. (The
conversation itself was published in a famous German journal along with other
dialogues with Husserl.) “I had no idea that it would be so difficult to die,”
Husserl confesses. “And yet I have tried hard, all my life, to get rid of all
futility! Now that I have arrived at the end, and everything is finished for
me, I know that I have to begin all over again.”

Ferraris’ source, which is Derrida’s Il
problema della genesi nella filosofia di Husserl, correctly attributes the
phrase to the report by the Benedictine nun. But the philosopher of
deconstruction mistakenly interprets these words as evidence of the human
failure of Husserl, because of “an objectivist or idealist checkmate.”

Instead, if one goes further into Jaegerschmid’s account, one realizes
that the true last words of Husserl indicate a victory rather than a defeat.
Husserl’s agony began on Holy Thursday, 14 April and ended on 26 April 1938,
extending over the weeks before and after Easter. Sr Adelgundis’ long account
begins in 1931 and shows how Husserl slowly drew near to a faith that was
intensely lived and not merely thought. On 14 April we find him still
determined to maintain the neutral position of a thinker: “I have lived as a
philosopher, I want to try to die as a philosopher.” Then things begin to
change, in dialogue with the religious sister and nurse: “Is it possible to die
well?” he asks. “Yes, and in deep peace,” responds the sister. “But how?”
Husserl persists. “In God,” comes the response.

Later, at the end of a reflection on Psalm 22 (“You are my shepherd”)
that the sister recited aloud, Husserl makes a request: “Now you must pray for
me.” Towards 9.00 p.m. on Holy Thursday he says to his wife: “God has received
me into his grace, and has allowed me to die.” From that moment he did not
speak any more of his philosophical work and he appeared relieved. When he
awoke the next morning he said: “Today is Holy Friday, what a marvellous day.
Yes, Christ has forgiven everything.” Then he passed thorugh moments of anguish
and of pain, but his struggle ended luminously. He said to the sister-nurse: “I
have seen something marvellous: quick, write!” But when the nurse returned with
a notebook, Husserl was dead.

We have a confirmation of this account by Husserl’s wife Malvine, who
converted to Catholicism in 1941. The testimony is reported by Karl Schuhmann,
the most rigour biographer of Husserl. Malvine recounts that for her husband,
“the night of his death was like a revelation of the most profound mysteries of
existence. Wonder, reverence, emotion, a presentiment of a wonderfully great
reality, all these awakened in him, together with a feeling almost of
happiness. There were no tears, he did not show any sign of bitter suffering.
He lay in complete peace, his face becoming more and more beautiful, no wrinkle
on his bright skin, his breath ever more peaceful. And when the nurse bent over
him and said, ‘Proficere anima christiana,’ he breathed his last, barely
perceptible breath. ‘He died like a saint,’ the Sister said in tears.”

It seems that Edith Stein has nothing to do with all this. But instead
she does. She was following the final suffering of her master from her
Carmelite monastery in Cologne, where she was preparing for her final vows,
which she professed on 21 April. In a letter written a few days after the death
of Husserl she said about a letter from Malvine: “The events of this week seem
to me a real gift on the occasion of my profession. I was earnestly hoping that
Husserl would pass to eternal life during this week, in the same way that my
mother passed away exactly at the moment when we were renewing our vows. Not
that I have great faith in my prayers or in my ‘merits’. I am only convinced
that God does not call anyone for his own sake and that, besides, when he is
happy with the offering of a soul, he is prodigal with the signs of his love.”

What Edith Stein had always thought about the sincerity and honesty of
her master’s search for truth had actually come to pass: “The man who really
searches for truth lives at the very heart of his intellectual quest. If he really
aims at truth (and not merely at a collection of particular notions), he is
perhaps closer to God than he himself suspects.”

Why do I
keep discovering such things? In Jerusalem there was Minh Dang who told me
about the little (or big) tricks that Heidegger had played with the work of
Husserl and Stein. And now this.

Add to it
the fact that Heidegger himself had that very ambiguous funeral. But certainly
Husserl, if we are to go by the above, is clearer, far clearer – and more
peaceful, in death as in life. That he passed his last agony in Holy Week; that
his pupil and then Carmelite nun and later martyr Edith Stein should be praying
her serene prayer for him; that he should be assisted by a Catholic nun and
that his wife should later become Catholic.

And that I
should discover that Stein’s godmother was a Protestant, Hedwig Conrad-Martius,
herself a disciple of Husserl’s, and who wrote books that should be one of the
driving inspirations in the thought of Joseph Ratzinger on person and
community.